Kingdom of Judah

The Kingdom of Judah was a kingdom of the southern Levant which existed from 930 BC to 586 BC. It was a successor to the United Kingdom of Israel, along with the Kingdom of Israel to the north. The sparsely-populated and poorly-fortified Kingdom of Judah was at war with Israel for the first sixty years, but they later formed an alliance against Aram Damascus, and the kingdoms alternated between friendship and war for centuries. In the 7th century BC, Judah prospered under Assyrian vassalage. After the Neo-Assyrian Empire was destroyed in 612 BC, Egypt and the Neo-Babylonian Empire struggled for control of the Levant. In 587 BC, the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem, destroyed Solomon's Temple, and deported the Jewish elite, turning Babylonia into a province.